NBC can’t keep results secret

By Richard Huff, New York Daily News

NBC anchor… NBC can’t keep results secret

By Richard Huff, New York Daily News

NBC anchor Brian Williams goes out of his way each night to give people a chance to avoid hearing the results of Olympic events being shown later on the network.

It’s a valiant effort, no doubt.

It’s also futile.

That was clear Tuesday evening, during Williams’ “Nightly News,” when his efforts were sunk by NBC’s own promo department. It ran a spot that stated: “Girls rule. Tomorrow on ‘Today’: America’s gold and silver sweethearts.”

The spot went on to mention Hannah Teter and Gretchen Bleiler, who that day earned the gold and silver metals, and their “wild ride to victory.”

In a matter of seconds, the information Williams attempted to shield from viewers who cared – about an event that anchored NBC’s Tuesday night coverage – was delivered by a “Today” promo.

An NBC News spokeswoman said that human error was the culprit for the “Today” spot getting on the air. She added that the mistake was rectified by the time the “Nightly News” aired on the West Coast.

But it was too late for those on the East Coast, eager to stay uninformed, who followed Williams’ advice to look away from the screen when the results of women’s snowboarding were posted.

The promo goof underscores the difficulty viewers now have if they try to avoid Olympic results so that they can watch, without knowing the outcomes, in prime time.

In short, it’s virtually impossible.

Watch any cable network and you’re bound to see a report, or at the very least, the results scrolling by on the never-ending tickers.

Two campus editors suspended for running Muhammad cartoons

By David Mendell, Chicago Tribune

The editor in chief of a student-led newspaper serving the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been suspended after printing cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad that, when published in Europe, enraged Muslims and led to violent protests in the Middle East and Asia.

Editor Acton Gorton and his opinions editor, Chuck Prochaska, were relieved of their duties at The Daily Illini on Tuesday while a task force investigates “the internal decision-making and communication” that led to the publishing of the cartoons, according to a statement by the newspaper’s publisher and general manager, Mary Cory.

Gorton said he expects to be fired at the conclusion of the investigation, which is expected to take two weeks.

“I pretty much have an idea how this is going to run, and this is a thinly veiled attempt to remove me from my position,” said Gorton, a University of Illinois senior who took the newspaper’s helm Jan. 1. “I am feeling very betrayed, and I feel like the people who I thought were my friends and supporters didn’t back me up.”

Nearly every major U.S. newspaper has not published the cartoons. They were first published in late September by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and reprinted in other European publications in recent weeks. The cartoons portray the prophet as a terrorist, including one that depicts Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb.

Gorton, 25, said he believes he made a sound journalistic decision in running six of the cartoons because the public has a right to judge their content. He said he consulted with top staff members and journalism instructors before making the decision to publish them in Thursday’s newspaper.

“This is not a publicity stunt, and this wasn’t an easy decision,” said Gorton.

Gorton’s decision, however, caused an uproar in the local Muslim community and rankled other Illini staff members after the paper was deluged with negative letters and e-mails about sensitive content.”

Internet gambling is the latest campus craze

By Patrick Kerkstra, Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA – Ari Paul’s dorm room at the University of Pennsylvania has the trappings of the contemporary collegiate male: acoustic guitar, Hooters calendar, supersize bag of tortilla chips on the floor and dual flat-screen computer monitors at which he’s playing three simultaneous hands of online poker.

The game is Omaha high, close to Texas hold ’em. Cards flick across the screens at a speed no casino dealer could match.

The stakes are low by Paul’s old standards, a total buy-in of just $500 at the three virtual tables. A political science major in a grueling senior year, he has reined in his game since last summer, when he routinely logged into online poker “rooms” with $3,000 and stayed 12 hours. His win rate (he calls it “expected value”) has tumbled from $150 an hour to $30.

Still, he claims to be up about $30,000 over two years.

If his accounting is accurate, Paul is far more skilled and certainly luckier than most of the estimated 1.6 million, overwhelmingly male, college students nationwide who in the last few years have become regular – some admit addicted – players of Internet poker.

Twenty-six percent of college men gamble in online card games at least once a month and 4 percent once a week or more, up from 1 percent a year earlier, according to a 2005 survey by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. The vast majority are betting on poker.

“We keep waiting for it to peak,” said Dan Romer, director of the Risk Survey of Youth. “So far, it hasn’t.”

The Justice Department considers Internet gambling illegal at any age. So the online poker rooms – at least 300 of them – are based outside the United States, with many in Canada but the largest in Gibraltar. Their profits come from raking in a very fat pot: $60 billion bet worldwide last year, according to London analysts who research the online poker industry for investors.